Disneyland Resort workers' tentative contract agreement leaves room for Anaheim's 'living wage' ballot measure The ugly battle over workers’ wages at the Happiest Place on Earth isn’t over. Although Walt Disney Co. has reached a tentative contract agreement with four unions at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, the media giant and its workers have plenty of fight left in them when it comes to wages for the resort’s 30,000 staffers. -snip- Now the workers and Disney officials are turning their attention to an initiative that the union qualified for Anaheim’s Nov. 6 ballot. It would require the Disneyland Resort and...

Of all the new laws going into effect Monday (legal cannabis in California, higher minimum wages in several states, and many more), you may be surprised about which one drew the most backlash online. It appears to be Oregon House Bill 2482, which allows people who live in counties with 40,000 residents or less to pump their own gas. Oregonians aired their frustrations on Facebook over the new law. And just about everyone else in the country made fun of them. New California laws going into effect in 2018 New era opens in California with first sales of recreational marijuana...

Two years ago, a popular pizza shop in Boston opened its doors promising fair wages to its employees. On Wednesday, Dudley Dough announced it will close at the end of the year, the Boston Globe reported. A fair wage, also called a living wage, is a wage that is high enough to provide a normal standard of living. Regulars at the restaurant say they’re losing a community resource and a singular business based on a premise of economic justice and healthy food, according to the Globe report. What’s the story? The restaurant pitched itself as “pizza with a purpose,” according...

In the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston back in 2015, the people at the nonprofit organization Haley House came up with a novel idea. They would open a pizza shop based on the principles of economic justice and fair wages to support the community. Named Dudley Dough, the shop would pay wages far above the minimum which many people in that industry earn, with added incentives for training and community development. It was an inspiring idea. Unfortunately for them, only two years later the place is closing down. It turns out that operating a for-profit business on the principles of a...

We reach the end of the year with yet another tale of crazy, one percenter wingnuts trying to claim that jacking up the minimum wage wonâ€™t do much to alleviate the issues facing the poorest Americans who the Democrats are seeking to help. This time the hateful claims are coming fromâ€¦ a study published by the federal government. Increasing the minimum wage is an inefficient way to reduce poverty, according to a Fed research paper that comes amid a national clamor to hike pay for workers at the low end of the salary scale.David Neumark, visiting scholar at the San...

President Obama said Wednesday that consumers would be OK paying higher prices if they knew it was the result of an increase in the national minimum wage. He argued that there was therefore no practical reason for anyone to oppose a hike. "I think that most of us are price-sensitive. We're not looking to over-pay. On the other hand, I'll bet that a lot of folks here, if they go to a restaurant, and they know that the people working there are making a living wage, the fact that they may be paying an extra dollar for a burger, would...

IRVINE – The City Council late Tuesday voted 4-1 to repeal the city’s living wage ordinance, which requires some contractors that do business with Irvine to pay its employees a slightly higher rate than the state’s $9 per hour minimum. The ordinance has been in place since 2007 when a 3-2 vote signed into law the requirement that companies that have contracts with the city worth at least $100,000 in a 12-month period pay more per hour.

Some fun relevant facts: Maryland's unemployment rate is ~ 5.5% Baltimore unemployment rate is ~ 8.2 % Baltimore unemployment rate for young black men is ~ 37% %Source CNN Money Maryland's minimum wage is $8.25 per hour Baltimore's minimum (called ‘living’) wage is much higher : ~ $11.50 per hour.source baltimorebrew .com Yep, almost $12 per hour. Recall how we are lectured that outlawing these low paying entry level jobs will create better paying jobs, because they all get a raise which they spend. Yep, no HS degree, no work experience, probably an arrest record (try looting businesses) . Sure...

SEATAC, Wash. — Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant told a SeaTac municipal court judge Thursday that she will represent herself in an upcoming trial for disorderly conduct prompted by her arrest in November during a protest. On Nov. 19, Sawant and three others were arrested for not leaving a roadway during a protest against big airlines for not paying their workers a living wage. Of those arrested, Sawant, Socrates Bravo and John Helmiere appeared together before a judge for a pretrial hearing. A judge exonerated their bail amounts.

resident Barack Obama, in his State of the Union speech, called for a minimum-wage hike and for government-mandated paid family and medical leave. "We are the only advanced country on Earth," said the President, "that doesn't guarantee paid sick leave or paid maternity leave to our workers." On the minimum wage, Obama issued this challenge: "And to everyone in this Congress who still refuses to raise the minimum wage, I say this: If you truly believe you could work full-time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, try it. If not, vote to give millions of the...

Minimum Wage: Fast-food workers engage in a nationwide "Fight for 15" while ignoring the economic reality of higher prices, fewer jobs and the sawing off of that first rung on the economic ladder of success. In a scene repeated in various cities across the country last Thursday, roughly 50 people were arrested as they protested in front of two Chicago-area fast-food restaurants as part of the push for a $15-per-hour minimum wage for fast-food workers, what they call a "living wage." These protests, organized by the infamous purple shirts of the Service Employees International Union, simply ignore economic reality. It...

McDonald’s employees who picketed for a better living wage (whatever that means) may come to regret that decision.... a McDonald’s in Illinois replaced their cashiers with machines. The machines appear to be the cousins of the ones found in grocery stores, big box stores, and CVS that allow customers to complete transactions... This is all basic economics, really. As costs of labor increase the added cost must be offset. In order to satisfy operating costs, produce a product consumers want to purchase, and still turn a profit, it’s perfectly reasonable for a company like McDonald’s to look for cost-cutting alternatives.......

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy is still a cause célčbre for the right-wing, drawing praise from Tea Party activists, Republican politicians, and conservative media outlets. Kevin Williamson of National Review called him a “dissident” like Mohandas Gandhi or Henry David Thoreau, Nevada Sen. Dean Heller hailed him as a “patriot,” and Sean Hannity has praised him as somebody that’s “willing to fight.” This was bad enough as an instance of conservative recklessness when Bundy was just a lawless rancher backed by armed militamen. It’s even worse now that we know that Bundy is full of racist bones. Here he is, as...

In the series "The Secret Life of a Food Stamp," Marketplace reporter Krissy Clark traces how big-box stores make billions from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, aka food stamps. What's more, the wages of many workers at these stores are so low that the workers themselves qualify for food stamps—which the employees then often spend at those big-box stores...

Laura Bailey said she used to make $60,000 a year in a government job. Now the 45-year-old makes about $15,600 working fulltime at a fast-food restaurant. A tragic series of events – job loss, her husband’s death, a serious illness – sent the mother of two spiraling from a comfortable life in Crownsville to homelessness and joblessness. After countless attempts to find clerical work, Bailey took a position in the Arundel Mills outlet mall for $7.80 an hour. In her off-hours, she’s been an advocate for raising the $7.25 minimum hourly wage, a proposal gaining momentum in the Maryland General...

Maryland’s Catholic bishops released a joint statement Jan. 20 urging fair treatment of workers. The statement coincides with Poverty Awareness Month and the state’s legislative session, where increasing the minimum wage and mandating paid sick leave for low-wage workers are already in the spotlight. The bishops make clear they want Maryland to enact legislation promoting “just compensation and a healthy work environment.” “While we hope one day the issue of raising the minimum wage will be addressed at the federal level, we cannot afford to wait in Maryland,” they stated. Titled “The Dignity of Work,” the one-page statement was released...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog In the real world, no liberal has ever bought a McDonaldâ€™s franchise and paid the workers $15 anÂ hour Recently, Huffington Post published an article about how easy it would supposedly be for McDonaldâ€™s to pay itsâ€™ employees $15 an hour. Soon afterward, they took the original article down, and replaced it with this article, which admits that the original article had been wrong.But I knew they were wrong before they admitted it. Having read the original article, one thing I noticed was that it wrongly assumed that the demand for McDonaldâ€™s food would not go...

A few words about the McBudget. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. As fast food workers around the country protest for higher wages, we learn that McDonald’s offers advice to help them live on the wages they make which, while not technically bupkes, do amount to a paycheck you can pretty much have the driver cash for you on the bus ride home. In December, for example, Bloomberg profiled a Chicago man who, after 20 years with the burger giant, earns $8.25 an hour — and doesn’t get 40 hours a week. This, as McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson pulled down, according...

Leadership: If Washington, D.C.'s local politicians have their way, three new Wal-Marts planned for the troubled city will not be built. Oh boy! Just what the capital's struggling residents need: fewer jobs and higher prices. ngaclThe extraordinarily unwise politicians who run the nation's capital have decided to pass a law that would require so-called "big box" retailers — Wal-Mart, in other words — to pay their workers a "living wage" of at least $12.50 an hour. Wal-Mart employees nationwide average just under $9 an hour. Wal-Mart is already building three stores in D.C., and has plans for three more. But...

The term Â“social justiceÂ”â€¦ is the key term and concept of Catholic social teaching â€¦ with all the other aspects of the Churchâ€™s social doctrineÂ—the principle of subsidiarity, the just wage or the right to private propertyÂ—are related to, and rely, on the existence of social justice. The term Â“social justice,Â” though common enough today, is little understood by most of those who use itÂ—whether they consider themselves friends and practitioners of social justice, or they regard it as a suspect term of probably socialist origin. But the term does have a precise meaning. That meaning and the significance of...